Travis Was A Leash Kid, Broken Floors, & More Tidbits About The Kelce Brothers As Kids

There is just something about those Kelce men. Beyond the Taylor Swift of it all, in fact long before the Grammy award-winning singer started dating Travis Kelce, there was something about the bond between football’s favorite brothers that left all of us feeling charmed. Or bewildered. Or, if you also happen to be the mom of two active boys like Donna Kelce, shaking your head in bemusement. Because based on everything we know about Jason and Travis Kelce as kids, they were absolute little scamps.

Travis was a leash kid.

This might come as a surprise to exactly no one, but when Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce was a little boy, he was a leash kid. He and his brother Jason Kelce had their parents Ed and Donna on an episode of their New Heights podcast in January, and this was when we all found out that young Travis was a leash kid. Donna recalled that Travis started walking when he was just 8 months old, and was so slippery that he could evade his parents. And so, when the family went to Cedar Point amusement park when he was a toddler, she wisely had him on a leash. “I was scared to death because you would just run off. I couldn’t catch you Trav, you were so fast. Plus, I couldn’t lift you,” she reminded her son. I mean, he does literally run for a living so it’s not too surprising.

They were both kicked out of preschool.

After seeing Jason Kelce rip his shirt off and scream at the top of his lungs when his brother scored a touchdown in Detroit, the fact that these Kelce boys were kicked out of preschool should also track with people. The brothers got kicked out of preschool after they were caught using sporks as weapons, they recalled on an episode of New Heights. “For some reason, we were stabbing each other with sporks and I hit him hard enough right in the forehead. I just remember the next day his dad had him under his arm and he had four little spork dots,” Travis explained.

The Kelces went all out at Christmas.

Jason Kelce remembers that he and his brother always had great holidays as kids. “Mama and Papa Kels, they held it down during the holidays,” Travis agreed on New Heights. They went on to share a sweet video of the boys on Christmas morning opening their gifts, with Jason exclaiming “oh my goodness!” when he saw all the gifts. As they got older and played football, the family spent a lot of holidays away from home, but Donna Kelce told People that those early years were special. “I remember the joy in their eyes as they woke up early on Christmas Day to come downstairs to screams, laughter and a flurry of ripped wrapping paper,” she recalled. So it wasn’t all just spork fights, apparently.

They were always super competitive.

Donna Kelce did say that her sons were competitive with each other, even as little boys. “They do not like to lose,” she told People. “That’s why they’re the professionals that they are. It’s give everything you can. When you don’t think you have any more in the tank, you push harder and you find out how far you can stretch yourself.”

Donna Kelce’s cookies have always been a tradition.

Donna Kelce rather famously has a tradition of giving her sons homemade chocolate chip cookies ahead of big games, and those cookies go way, way back to when they were little boys. She told Romper that she was more of a baker than a cook when her sons were little, and kept lots of cookies and baked goods on hand for them. I bake a lot. I’m not really a cook. I’m more of a baker, so I love making muffins and cookies and just all kinds of things, cinnamon rolls. I just love doing that kind of stuff,” she told Romper.

They loved their cat “Flash.”

Jason Kelce might not want a cat for his own kids, but when he was a little boy he and his brother Travis loved their cat “Flash.” Donna Kelce told People, “We had a cat growing up. It was fun with Flash,” adding that even Flash the cat was an athlete. “They loved Flash because Flash was an athlete. Let me tell you, that cat was amazing.”

Travis was shy as a kid.

It’s almost impossible to imagine the super confident, always smiling Travis Kelce being a shy little boy, but that’s the truth. “You probably won’t believe it, but I was a shy kid growing up until I got onto the sports field, or the court, or the ice rink, and then I let my personality show a little bit more because I was having fun,” he explained in a press conference ahead of the Super Bowl. “I was having success, and that’s just propelled me to have confidence in life.”

It helped that his mom was a big fan of filming his childhood as well. “She had that camera on me at all times, seeing what silly stuff I’m going to do next,” he added. “Honestly, I’ve just always been comfortable in the rooms that I’ve been in and just been fortunate that I’ve been able to look into a camera with ease.”

Jason used a wrestling move on Travis that broke their floor.

The boys grew up watching wrestling, and once Jason “power-bombed” his little brother right through the living room floor when they were emulating their favorite wrestlers. “We just slid the couch over it, so that our parents wouldn’t know. My mom was vaccuuming two weeks and figured it out, and sure enough we got in trouble for it,” Travis Kelce said in a press conference, looking unrepentant. Oh Donna, we feel you.

They used to sell the lunches their mom made them.

Donna Kelce would make her sons homemade lunches in high school, and what do you think those boys did with them? Use them to haggle. “They were big at just eating cereal. They would get a honeybun at school. I didn’t realize that’s what they were doing,” Kelce told Romper. “They were selling their lunch that I would make for them, and they would get a honeybun and walk across the street and get Wendy’s.”

They could eat an entire chicken each in high school.

Keeping Travis and Jason Kelce fed was a full time job for their parents, so much so that Donna Kelce told Romper she felt like she “got a raise” when they went off to college. Which makes sense considering her sons could eat “entire chickens” by themselves. “They could sit down and eat an entire chicken in high school each — not together; each one of them could finish a chicken,” she told People in October.

Those Kelce boys were absolutely little scamps as kids, and look at them now.